44
WOLFGANG STOOD AS GEORGE WALKED INTO THE underground laboratory that now housed the Snark. “Well,” he said, “welcome back. It looks as if your vacation did you good. You look very healthy.” They shook hands. Wolfgang looked down at his hand as he withdrew it.
“I had to make a quick trip over to Seattle,” said George. “Not particularly restful.”
“I must go to Seattle sometime,” said Wolfgang. “You look ten years younger.”
“Perhaps it’s the coffee,” George said. “How has our Snark been behaving while I’ve been gone?”
“Schlecht,” said Wolfgang. “The day after you left, the second-level transmissions from the Makers stopped. Tunnel Maker is still talking to us, but he’s been rather evasive about further large transmissions. He says they have come to the end of their prepared downloads. From now on we should ask questions or request specific information. On the other hand, his end is still downloading massive quantities of our data from the Internet, the Web, the NSF net, and various proprietary databases that they have bought access to, using the bank account we provided. I’ve watched it on the monitor. There is no subject, from pornography to pet grooming, that has escaped their notice.”
“Hmm,” said George. “What happens when you do make a request for further information?”
“When I’ve tried,” said Wolfgang, “Tunnel Maker has usually given me a reference to data that we’ve already downloaded. It’s certainly true that it’s going to take us a long time to digest all the information they’ve already provided, but surely that’s not all there is. It seems the equivalent of giving a child a set of encyclopedias instead of educating him.”
“What about this end?” asked George.
Wolfgang gestured toward the equipment racks. “We made many equipment changes. I think we’ve reached some limit to the transmission rate. We’re up to two hundred megabaud now, and it seems difficult to go higher.”
“Any problems with outside interference?”
“We had an official visit. Your SSC director showed up here with a big group of ‘interested parties’ from various of your government agencies. There were people from your DOE, FBI, CIA, NSA, and some military officers in uniform. The military people said their experts had been studying the downloads and had some questions about the Hive species mentioned in them. They were once again threatening to take the Snark and move it to a secure site, but we convinced them that as long as the data was streaming in from the Makers, we shouldn’t change anything. I don’t know how long that will last.”
“Okay, Wolfgang, thanks for all your effort here,” said George. “I can take over now, if you’ve got things to do. I need to talk to Tunnel Maker. Perhaps I can get a clue as to what’s going on.”
Wolfgang looked relieved. “I’m glad you’re back, George,” he said. “I’ve been practically living here, and my wife is beginning to complain.”
As they shook hands again, George looked at him closely. “You don’t look so well, Wolfgang,” he said. “Perhaps you’re coming down with some virus. I’ve heard there’s a new flu strain going around. Perhaps you should take a few days off.” He wondered how Wolfgang would react when he began to Read.
Wolfgang blinked, surprised. “I feel well enough,” he said as he left. “But I’ll be careful. Danke.”
After checking the door, George triggered the microphone connection. “Okay, Tunnel Maker, we’re back. We hatched your Egg in the Gulf of Mexico. Your daughter, Iris, is a lovely child. We like her very much.”
“Yes,” the voice of Tunnel Maker came from the speaker, “I am in contact with the one you call Iris. I am aware of your progress.”
“She told us that you were in contact, but I don’t understand that,” said George. “I thought such communication between Bubbles was only possible through a wormhole.”
“Once a Bridge, what you call a wormhole, has been established, it is not difficult with our technology to cause it to divide, to become two instead of one. It can be dangerous to have more than one Bridge connecting between Bubbles, should a time shift between them occur, but in this case there is no problem. The Egg contained a new Bridgehead, which is now inside the head of Iris. We use it to communicate.”
“Iris has told us about the race she calls the Hive and the danger they present. She thinks that we have perhaps a year to prepare.”
“Yes,” said Tunnel Maker. “There is a certain risk until we can train you to be fully prepared to deal with a Hive incursion. Fortunately, you probably have some time to prepare. You will need to construct a permanent network of sensors around the SSC ring to detect such an incursion. You must make preparations for capturing the Hive Bridgehead, for using the SSC to process it, also certain other backup preparations.
“But for the critical next few days, while these steps are in progress, you must make certain that no Hive Bridgehead is already here. You must begin a survey of all the beam intersection points around the ring, using handheld Bridge detectors. Iris can assist you in producing them. If you should detect another event like the one you call the Snark event, if another Bridge has been produced, it must be captured immediately.”
“That sounds okay,” said George. “I’ve been given a team of scientists assigned to work on the contact with you, and we can train them. What you describe can be taken on as a subsidiary task. But suppose we did detect a Bridgehead? What could we do about it?”
“First, isolate it as you did the Snark particle. Second, immerse the Bridgehead and its immediate surroundings in liquid helium. No incursions by the Hive would be possible in such a low temperature and inert gas environment. Iris can provide details.”
“If we do detect a new Bridge, how long would we have to deal with it?” asked George. “What you describe would certainly take some time.”
“From our past experience with the way the Hive operates, it takes some time before they have produced enough Workers, Soldiers, and Flyers to form a Hive Mind. We can be sure that you would have at least two of your rotations to deal with the problem. Perhaps longer, but it is important to detect their Bridgehead as quickly as possible. After the Hive Mind becomes conscious, their incursion cannot be contained.”
“And the consequences if we fail to contain it?” George asked.
“Your world, your universe, would be assimilated by the Hive. Or perhaps destroyed with a time vortex to prevent this.”
45
THE BRIDGE DETECTOR THAT IRIS HAD PROVIDED looked like a plain white bar of soap with a dark blue dot on one end. At some level, Alice could understand saving the universe while wielding some gleaming sword or high-tech laser bazooka, but a bar of soap? The whole idea seemed absurd. She had protested to Iris, but the child had not understood her objection.
This morning she, George, and Roger had each gone to one of the three SSC beam intersection points on the west campus to check for Hive incursions. They had found none, but it was good practice. Now they were doing the same thing for the east campus.